


I Rise, A New Life in the Heart of Death (But the Compass was Always You)

by Rider_of_Spades



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Red String of Fate, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:48:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24465976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rider_of_Spades/pseuds/Rider_of_Spades
Summary: An AU where Ra's was a nice normal man chilling in the 16th century... until he found out his soulmate would only be born 500 years later.(First chapter will be actual fic; the rest... might just be headcanons. Rating subject to change.)
Relationships: Tim Drake/Ra's al Ghul
Comments: 23
Kudos: 130
Collections: Airs Art Arch Fortnightlies





	1. The Catalyst (Prologue)

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter was beta-ed by the lovely Kiyoko on Discord.

Once upon a time, there was a man, a kindly doctor. He was charming, eloquent and intelligent, the very heart and soul of his community. Nevertheless he lived a simple life, for he found joy in simple things. A morning cup of spiced tea. A good book. The smiles of the children he treated. Watching the sun set. Such was his days, and he was happy.

Alas, there was but one blemish, one dark spot in his happiness, and that was his lack of a mate. For fate had not granted him the red string that would lead him to one, and he would take on no other. And so he spent his days alone, a bachelor among his mated friends, occasionally wanting, wishing; perhaps even praying to his god. But it was not to be.

He’d thought. He’d thought he would die alone.

Maybe he did, in some other story. (In many other stories.) He didn’t, in this.

What happened was, in his early forties, the doctor rescued from the brink of death a powerful seer. And in return, the seer promised him the gift of knowledge, whatever his heart’s desire. The lonely, desperate man asked,

“Will I ever meet my soul’s other half? Or has fate not granted me one at all?”

The seer peered into the man’s eyes. Then they shed tears and said, “Alas, my friend. Fate has indeed granted you a soulmate, true, but they shall only be born in five hundred years.”

The poor doctor paled upon learning this. He could not eat after; he could not sleep. He lay there a broken man, and raged against his god. Still the days passed, for the grand river of time cared not for the piteous fates of mortals.

Of mortals.

But what if he were to forsake being a mortal?

What if he were to take a different path? To live beyond the normal span, and meet his soulmate at the end of five hundred years?  
  


  
Then he would have to stray from the holy light of his god.

The doctor closed his eyes.

In the ensuing decade, he would wander from town to town, library to library. He offered his services to lords and kings alike, in exchange for food and access to their archives. What he sought, he would never share. All any onlooker knew was that he sought it with a fervor that left him burning candles many nights.

On his fifty-second birthday, his searches bore fruit. He found what would eventually be known as a Lazarus Pit.

The man cried tears of sheer joy, and praised whatever higher power that led him to this discovery. Eager was he to bathe in its wondrous waters. So eager.

No book, of course, could have foretold the unimaginable pain that would strike him soon after entering its waters.

No book would’ve mentioned the whispers that would enter his mind after either.

No tale was told of this once unremarkable, kindly man, lost to time, but a thousand tongues would speak of the shadow of this man that rose from the Pits, again and again, after.

They called him The Demon’s Head.

(And all he’d wanted was to make his soulmate proud. All he’d wanted was to show his soulmate a better world.

…All he’d wanted was to cleanse the world, just a little, of the ever encroaching plague of humanity so that it would survive to birth his beloved.

After all, you had to trim the bush occasionally if you wanted a healthy rose.) 


	2. An Appointment in Samarra (Extra)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I lied. Here, have an excerpt I wrote for a Skillshare course that (somewhat) fits into this Ra'sTim AU.

There was no one around to record it the first time it happened. Too many deaths had occurred on this pointless battlefield, and he was just another one of them.

However, Wikipedia will remember the man who died beside him as a footnote, the young son of a reasonably powerful lord. All it will mention is where he died and when, and if you do the math you’ll know he’d just barely reached manhood. What it cannot tell you was that it was a slow death.

He’d been struck down by a spear to the gut. His would-be killer had died ten paces after at the end of another sword, but he wasn’t even thinking about that anyway. No, his gaze and attention had rested on the man beside him, who, oddly enough, was dressed in mere robes in the sea of armour.

The older man beside him, who was also bleeding too much to be alive soon enough, who also appeared to be… calm.

The dying young man was not calm. Beneath his tinge of shame was a raging panic and grief, at leaving his father and mother and sweetheart behind. And so he rasped in a dialect that will also die in another 200 years, “I say, my good man.”

The older man shifted his skyward idle gaze to look at him and replied. “Yes?”  
  


  
The dying young man asked, “What, what makes you so calm?” A brief hope stirred in his chest. “Do you know if help will come?”  
  


  
The older man closed his eyes. “I’m afraid not. It’s not likely given the fighting is still fierce at the eastern side of the city.”

  
  
“Oh.” The young man coughed. Tears –of pain and disappointment, perhaps –sprung to his eyes. “Th-then, what’s your secret? The grace of Allah?” Perhaps he should’ve prayed harder…

To his surprise, the older man barked a laugh. “Oh dear, no. I was just thinking about what preserve to have with tea later on.”  
  


  
The young man stared. Tea? Was this man mad? But before he could ask more, another wave of agony washed over him, and he spent the last thirty seconds in his journey towards death, knowing no more.

The young man’s body would be brought home and greatly mourned by his father, who swore greater vengeance against the white devils. Nobody mourned the older man.

After all, no one could mourn some corpse that was no longer even there.


End file.
